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Graduate student instructors (GSIs) in mathematics play a pivotal role in shaping undergraduate education and are the future of collegiate mathematics faculty. As part of their development, GSIs are expected to engage in teaching-focused professional development (TPD), particularly in evidence-based strategies like Active Learning (AL) methods. However, higher education is only beginning to explore how to effectively measure GSIs' growth in teaching skills through such TPD. This study examines the learning process of 47 novice GSIs from three universities, specifically focusing on their evolving understanding of AL before and after participating in TPD. By analyzing the GSIs' own definitions of AL, the research highlights changes in their knowledge and alignment with the intended TPD outcomes. The findings provide insight into the effectiveness of TPD on AL, while also offering recommendations for structuring future evaluations of TPD impact on GSI teaching knowledge and skills. 

Teaching professional development (TPD) in collegiate mathematics has expanded over the last few decades. Providers of TPD, people who organize and facilitate professional learning about teaching, are at the center of this growth. Yet, little is known about who Providers are and what they do. To better understand the national landscape of Providers of TPD within university mathematics departments, this report shares data from a national survey where respondents were Providers. The focus here is on findings from survey questions asking about characteristics of Providers and the “providees” with whom they work, along with formats, topics, and activities used in TPD. Results suggest that Providers value active, learner-centered instructional methods promoted by research and policy. However, in the TPD itself, formats, topics, and activities commonly used by Providers may preach but not regularly practice activity-based methods. 

Those who lead the preparation and assessment of novice college mathematics instructors for teaching (Providers) do their work in many ways (e.g., course coordination, seminars,workshops). Using data from a large national survey, this study examined reporting among 95 Providers about the structures of their departments, their goals for the professional development work they do, and their relative valuation among goals. Respondents completed a sorting and ranking activity about professional development goals and answered an open-ended question describing their sorting decisions. Qualitative coding identified six main themes for the respondents’ 285 descriptions. Quantitative analysis used the rankings of goals within respondents’ sorting categories to examine how Providers describe and value professional development goals related to professional community, classroom and department culture, and instructor response to students within their classrooms. 

College and department administrators take undergraduate student complaints about Graduate Student Instructors (GSIs) seriously. However, little research has been done to examine the nature of undergraduate student complaints across multiple mathematics departments from the lens of student-centered instruction. In this study, we compared formal (i.e. documented in writing by the student) undergraduate mathematics student complaints about GSIs at two universities over five years. Complaints were analyzed by coding the contextualized concerns described in the complaints using the Mathematical Association of America’s Instructional Practices Guide to align complaints with topics discussed as best-teaching practices. Results demonstrated that concerns about classroom and assessment practices were the most prevalent. Concerns about classroom practices were slightly more abundant and more pervasive throughout the semester than concerns about assessment practices. Additionally, an outside-of-class issue undergraduate students raised was regarding the effectiveness of GSIs communication via emails. 

In this study, two universities created and implemented a student-centered graduate student instructor observation protocol (GSIOP) and a post-observational Red-Yellow-Green feedback structure (RYG feedback). The GSIOP and RYG feedback was used with novice mathematics graduate student instructors (GSIs) by experienced GSIs through a peer-mentorship program. Ten trained mentor GSIs observed novice GSIs, completed a GSIOP, and provided RYG feedback as part of an observation-feedback cycle. This generated 50 semester-long data sets of three observation-feedback cycles of novice GSIs. Analyzing these 50 semester-long data sets helped identify how certain feedback influenced GSIOP scores. 

In this study, two universities created and implemented a student-centered graduate student instructor observation protocol (GSIOP) and a post-observational Red-Yellow-Green feedback structure (RYG feedback). The GSIOP and RYG feedback was used with novice graduate student instructors (GSIs) by experienced GSIs through a peer-mentorship program. Ten trained mentor GSIs completed 50 sets of three observations of novice GSIs. Analyzing 151 GSIOPs and 151 RYG feedback meetings longitudinally provided insight to identify what types of feedback informed and influenced GSIOP scores. After qualitatively coding feedback along multiple dimensions, we found certain forms of feedback were more influential for GSI development than others with respect to change in GSIOP score. Our results indicate contextually-specific feedback leads to more observed changes and improvement across multiple observations than decontextualized feedback.